Posted tagged ‘pug’

It’s story time! There can never be too many PuG tales. Every time we think we’ve seen and heard it all, something unthinkable happens and the world must be informed.

I had my epeen sliced and diced and put in the blender yesterday. And I liked it. It was a Pit of Saron random group. (Why do I feel like saying that implies it’ll be a great story?) We had a warrior, we had a shadow priest, we had a rogue and we had a hunter. I assumed the warrior was tanking, but I checked everyone’s health to make sure. Ok, yes, he has the most. Not by much, but it should be enough. Thats the furthest I go. I don’t do gearscore and I don’t manually inspect. In a PuG, I figure I’m stuck with these people for better or for worse. Judging them as we zone in does more harm than good.

We buff, we pull. The rogue insta-dies. The trash goes down ok, not too much damage, looks like it’ll be a decent run.

We clear to the first boss. We pull him. The rogue insta-dies. Seems like we’re taking more damage than usual, but it’s ok, I like some exercise. Oooops, the Spriest has aggro! Quick! Hand of Protection! Ouf! I better salv her, just in case. How’s the hunter doing for aggro? Seems to be ok. Where’s his pet? Oh. At his feet. Well, at least auto-shot seems to working. It was a rough go, it lasted awhile, but we got him down. I still have most of my mana. Not bad, not bad.

Clear some more trash, then time for Krick and Ick! We pull. The rogue insta-dies. The hunter auto-shoots, his pet at his feet. It was a long fight, but it’s ok, I’m always complaining that fights are too short anyway.

Now for the tricky trash part! We pull. The rogue insta-dies. Mobs are flying everywhere! No danger of the hunter or the pet as his feet pulling aggro, but the poor shadow priest carrying us… Hand of Protection! Hand of Salv! Oh dear, oh dear. OMG somehow the hunter is almost dead! Eeeek! Good thing I timed that big heal well! Crap! I’m being attacked all over. Um. Um. Holy Wrath! Bubble Sac! Oh no! Oh no! The priest! Aaaaah the tank! Curse beacon falling off! Aaaaaah!!!! Holy Lights were spammed all over the place, I was on the edge of my seat. I must keep my team alive! I must, I must! Healing Anub’arak 10 on hard mode is cake compared to this!

Slowly the damage lessened. Despite clever use of Divine Plea and Divine Illumination, I was almost completely drained of mana. I was sweaty and shaking. And, oh!, how I was feeling smug. “God, I’m awesome.” I thought to myself. “I can’t believe I just healed through that. I love me.” Surely, they will compliment me on this incredible feat of strength!

Fat chance! I used the rest of my juice to rez the rogue and I sat down to drink. “Mana!” I called out.

“Mana shmana,” thought the tank, who ran ahead to pull the next group.

There was no point in even getting up. There’s no way I would have time to reach him. Besides, it’s not like I had any mana to use on him anyway. I exhaled, closed my eyes and let death take me.

“Attack the bone guy next time” ordered the tank.

I rolled my eyes. “Wait for the healer next time.”

I expected an apology, but, yeah, I have really unreasonable expectations. And I think healer text is only visible to other healers anyway. The tank completely ignored me.

When I’m done, we get into position. We pull. The rogue insta-dies. The tank gets two-shotted. Legit wipe. I admit defeat and ask for a shackle this time. Luckily the shadow priest must be a part time healer because she completely got the message and made excellent use of her shackle. The rogue insta-died a few more times with following pulls, but we reached the cave.

The cave was…like…nothing I had ever experienced before. We ran in. The rogue insta-died. The ground was littered in blue runes. The poor hunter with his pet at his feet. He must have been tossed around by every single piece of falling snow. But unless they get one-shotted, I don’t abandon my teammates. I kept him alive each time! As I’m running and dodging, casting any heals I could get out, I see the poor shadow priest almost dying. Nooooo! Hand of Protection! Uh oh, the mobs are coming for me now! Um. Um. Um. Holy wrath! Bubble sac! I vaguely wonder why the tank isn’t tanking any damage… I shrug and place my beacon on the shadow priest instead.

For what seemed like an eternity, I did everything right. I used Lay on Hands at the right moment. I kept Hand of Protection and Hand of Salv on cooldown. Whenever my greater heals were interrupted by the dozens of zombies eating me, I cast Holy Wrath and ran to the tank. I used every trick in the book to avoid running out of mana. Going by how many times I cast Hand of Protection, the fight lasted at the very least 6 minutes. 6 minutes of intensity. 6 minutes of deep focus. 6 minutes of spamming Holy Light between running. 6 minutes of having my face eaten by ghouls. I kept all 4 of us alive, using every trick in the book.

By the time we reached the end of the cave and the shadow priest had cleared the trash, my epeen had become the longest epeen in epeen history. Surely, they will thank me now! They will congratulate me! They will wonder how I managed this awesomeness! They will write songs in my honour!

The tank turned to me and spoke in party chat. Excited to receive approval, I turned to read it. What followed was the most extreme epeen crushing I had ever experienced, yet, at the same time, it completely made my day.

So there’s this thing people do in the game that they find really funny. Maybe I’m an old lady who yells at kids on her lawn, maybe I have no sense of humor, maybe I’m a freak but I don’t get it.

Here’s how it went. Since transferring to a new server, I’ve forced myself to get over my hangups about pugging. Being the new recruit to a guild that’s more advanced than me, the only way I’m going to get better without annoying everyone is by pugging the daily heroic and any 10 man ToCs/Onys I can find. The server has a lot of good guilds and pugging seems to be less of a big deal than it was a Moonrunner. However, being brand new to the server, I can’t rely on knowing other guilds’ reputations to choose who I’ll pug with. I hop into LFG and pray.

After desperately trying to find a ToC 10 group for an hour, I finally see the magic words: LF healer ToC 10, need priest or pally. Awesome! I whisper my stats and I’m in. Then we die. I look at my tank. Not much other than Naxx gear, but no one else knows this. He’s going to die every time I have to move and I’m going to be blamed. Crap. Someone claims they’d never seen the fight before. Oh boy. I have 2 hours and all I need are 6 badges, surely we can get Northrend Beasts and Jaraxxus down eventually. We die a few more times, but it seems we can do it. I stick around.

They’re joking around on vent, they all seem to know each other very well. Obviously they’re playing their alts, just relaxing a bit in the evening. All I need are badges, I have 2 hours, I can do this. Northrend Beasts go down. We cheer. I force myself out of my “just want to get this instance over with” and begin to enjoy the company of my pug. Jaraxxus goes down. Onto Faction Champs. They explain it for 15 minutes. I don’t bother renewing my flask, I alt tab out and read some blogs. We easily one shot Faction Champs. They’re amazed. I tell them about dispelling being the key to healing the fight. They gasp at my 113 dispells. I secrectly thank my new guild and Maintankadin for teaching me this a few days ago. Twins go down (no not like that, stop it people). Onto Anub.

I’ve alt tabbed out at this point. I come back to see myself dead. Right. I’ve heard of pugs doing this and someone tried it in my old guild once (he’s probably still wishing he hadn’t), but I didn’t expect people to actually still do that. Apparently it’s REALLY funny to put waterwalk/path of frost/other on people when the floor breaks. This group obviously think it’s HILARIOUS that about 4 of us died to path of frost. Right when I thought I was starting to like this group of people, they’re laughing so hard they can barely speak.

And I’m trying to figure out where the amusement is.

Then one of the guys in the group, another pug person, not from the guild running the pug, talks about how he used to Water Walk people on Lurker so they’d get hit by the spout. They find that really funny too.

I don’t get it.

I’m all for killing the occasional warlock. But wasting everyone’s time, risking a wipe (in the Lurker story) and giving people 10g repair bills for no good reason? I really can’t find the funny in that. Ok, maybe the first time someone thought to put up path of frost when falling down to Anub, it was sort of funny. But after ToC has been around for months and you currently have impatient guests in your group? Riiiiiiight.

I bit my tongue, made them rez me and won a new mace when we downed Anub. I thanked them for the group and even added the better players to my friends list.

But I still don’t see what’s funny about killing people with path of frost. Have I lost my humanity?